252. Adaptations - Brittany Collins
It’s been seven years since that summer, since this condition sliced my life into a “before” and “after.” I still wish to run and dance with the fervor I once did. But as I approach a decade of growth, I also linger on all that I’ve gained.
I’ve always been a push-through person. So a forty-mile breast cancer walk—streets lined with onlookers offering Gatorade and Band-Aids—felt, at the age of eighteen, like the surest way to mourn. Having lost my father to breast cancer and watched my mother endure the first of two breast cancer diagnoses, there seemed some metaphorical significance in pushing my body beyond its limits—to honor its aliveness and the not-aliveness of those who mattered to me. It didn’t occur to me that one day walking could prove to be a challenge.
Yet one year later, at the age of nineteen, I developed dysautonomia, a neurological condition similar to long Covid. Pushed down a hospital hallway in a wheelchair, peering from waiting rooms at the same streets I once traveled with confidence, I wondered how, in just twelve short months, youth and strength could turn into illusions. What now? I asked myself from a hip-level view of the world, as medical residents whisked around me. Visions of teaching, traveling to Spain, and someday trundling through the city with toddlers strapped to my chest and back suddenly evaporated.
It’s been seven years since that summer, since this condition sliced my life into a “before” and “after.” I still wish to run and dance with the fervor I once did. But as I approach a decade of growth, I also linger on all that I’ve gained. Because of dysautonomia, I’ve met groups of women who share my diagnosis who are dedicated to sharing resources and laughs; I’ve taught students with disabilities different from my own.
I’ve grappled (if not completely come to terms) with the reality that flare-ups will happen, and they will be scary and so hard, but they’ll pass. I’ve found that books and flowers and forest trees can fill a life in ways I couldn’t notice when I was pushing through.
Coming to terms with losses and gains is the task of a lifetime. I still mourn, wish, rage, and wonder what life could have been like. At the same time, I feel gratitude for all that my body has endured and all that it still allows me to do. I now realize that fortitude sometimes presents, on the surface, as fragility. When my body was at its weakest, my spirit had to become strong. And through that adaptation—learning to live within limitation—I turn to the world with different eyes.
There is no “other side” to some forms of challenge. My story is neither a narrative arc nor a neat lesson learned, but a both/and embrace of beauty and fight, stillness and might—a bow to all that is lost, and all that remains.
- Brittany Collins
